He sat up, begging endearingly.Coincidence, she thought.He couldn’t know what she’d said.
Carefully, she rose, the mouse still in her hand, and went to Rate’s small store of goods, extracting a cracker from the tin.She set the mouse and cracker down on the cot and watched as he daintily ate his supper.
“Do you ever want to escape?”she asked.“Do you think about a little girl mouse?Or adventures?Or have you already had more than you want?”She wondered about her sanity in talking to a rodent, but she needed to hear the sound of her own voice, and she wondered whether Rafe had needed to hear his voice in prison.She remembered his bitter words when she had first come here.“Anyone can be tamed, Miss Randall.”
She couldn’t imagine Rafe being tamed, but she wondered whether he had tamed her, after all.Was that why she had stayed here when she could have escaped?Because he’d tamed her in ways she hadn’t expected?
She sighed.She was tired.So much had happened today.So many emotions expended.She went over to the cot; blood had dried on the blanket.His blood.She thought of that gaping wound again and was almost sick.
Still, she was too weary to do anything about the stains.She lowered her head on the rolled-up blanket that served as a pillow, thinking that sleep would be long in coming.She was mildly surprised when she felt herself drifting off into a dream-shrouded sleep.
Chapter 17
Ben left the following morning after tending Rafe’s wound, and for two days Rafe felt very much like the snarling bear that was still prowling outside the cabin.He was too weak to go fishing, too restless to stay quiet.He tended to the young cub, tried to curry the horse before giving up in disgust when his arm rebelled.
He was so damned weak, and he hated that fact.
At least, Shea hadn’t played nursemaid to him.He’d managed to care for his wound himself.He didn’t think he could tolerate Shea Randall’s touch, not after his bitter words that night several days ago.He had revealed all too much then, and he was thoroughly disgusted with himself for doing so.
And thoroughly disgusted with the way his head felt after drinking Ben’s whiskey, homemade by one of the miners Ben called friend and strong as the Devil.He’d not drunk that much since the night after his release from prison, when he and Ben had gotten thoroughly drank.The aftermath wasn’t worth the momentary oblivion, and he didn’t want oblivion, dammit.He wanted to remember everything.He needed to remember everything.Every lonely, godforsaken day in prison, every look of revulsion when a stranger, even convicts, saw his scar.He needed to feel the waves of hate, the way his stomach knotted when he thought of Randall, by God.
He shouldn’t need reminders, but the damn woman was eating into his consciousness like locusts through a cornfield.
She even made him feel guilty for doing what needed to be done.He didn’t need guilt.He already had enough anger to fill every nook and cranny of his being.
Shea Randall, however, was difficult to ignore.He found it impossible now to put her in her place as his captive.Things had inevitably changed.If she’d ever had any fear of him, she didn’t now.He saw that readily enough.They had become partners of sorts days earlier when she had tended him, and together they had tended the small bear cub.
He still locked her in the cabin at night, sleeping outside the window after that first night in the stable, but it was more a reminder himself that she was captive to his captor rather than fear she might escape.
He wished he knew what she was thinking.Her eyes were watchful, questioning, but not afraid.
Christ, if only the physical attraction between them weren’t so strong, so damnably obvious, even to Ben.Rafe didn’t understand it, couldn’t accept it, not with Randall’s daughter, but there it was.Even with his arm hurting like hell, he wanted her.
The tension between them rose steadily after Ben left.He had been a safety valve of sorts, a buffer between them, but once he rode out, the level of pressure between Rafe and Shea rose and boiled, threatening to explode again.Rafe knew he had to do something, but damned if he knew what.
He could only watch her, try to keep his frustration to a controllable level.He’d even tried to read a book.
Reading had been his only escape in prison.Since his release he had asked Ben to buy any book he happened to find and had collected a very small library, which, until Shea Randall’s invasion, had engaged him when he wasn’t wandering in the woods, exploring his freedom.
Words made him forget.Words freed him, momentarily, from bitterness.
But they didn’t have their usual magic today, the third day since Ben left.Rafe felt strong enough to go fishing this morning.The wound had stopped seeping, and for the first time he could move it without agonizing pain.
He looked up as the door to the cabin opened, and Shea came outside with her sketchpad.She was wearing a very simple blue gingham dress that deepened the blue in her eyes; her hair was not braided but pulled back and tied with a ribbon.She sat down on the tree stump with Abner on her lap.She kept looking down at the mouse, and he knew she was drawing it.
A charming picture, he thought, trying unsuccessfully to color it with the cynicism and bitterness that had been his longtime companions.
Where in the hell was the she-bear?It had provided a distraction during the past few days, but it disappeared this morning after sniffing the cub once more and finding it better.A few more days, Rafe thought, and the cub would be able to return to the woods.It was already moving better, learning to balance on its three good legs.He had high hopes for the injured leg.
He supposed the cub was sleeping now.It had consumed all of the crackers, except for a few held back for Abner, and the canned goods were being swiftly depleted by Rafe and Shea.Something had to be done about finding food.
Ben should return sometime this afternoon.Clint had ridden up yesterday to check on Rafe and to tell him Randall had disappeared the day earlier, saying merely that he was going up into the mountains on a hunting trip.Clint had thought he might be trying to track Rafe, but Randall was not known for tracking skills, and Clint doubted anyone could find this valley.Randall, Clint reported, had said nothing about the daughter, and had been tense and unusually uncommunicative.
There was something else, Clint had said.Another miner had been found dead.Apparently killed a few days ago.There was a meeting called in Rushton tonight.
Ben was mingling with the miners, trying to bring them together for protection rather than to form a vigilante committee that might mistakenly go after Rafe’s outlaw band, which they believed responsible for all the troubles in the area south of Casey Springs.
A third piece of news was more welcome.Men were leaving the Circle R.They’d not been paid in months now, and only a few drovers remained to guard what was left of Randall’s herd.
